Planning and Zoning Explained by Member Mike Marshall (CFFL 527)
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. Today Jill and I, in this episode, have a treat for our listeners.
Jill DeWit: We do.
Jack Butala: We're going to talk with Mike Marshall, land use zoning career expert. For the last 12 years of Mike's professional career, his been in the field of land use and zoning in jurisdictions that involve California and Texas. He's managed a variety of projects from large scale residential subdivision to several hundred thousand square feet of commercial developments.
He believes he can actually help us, or help our members with a significant experience in zoning and it can be boiled down to understanding what we have and what we can get and how we can get it. I can't wait -
Jill DeWit: I know. I'm excited. It's [crosstalk 00:00:43]cool.
Jack Butala: My biggest challenge with Mike today is going to be keep this at less than an hour.
His early beginning zone career journey in the land investing and believes he can bring a unique experience, and some value to the group. Mike, welcome.
Jill DeWit: Welcome.
Mike Marshall: Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here with you guys. I appreciate the opportunity.
Jack Butala: Absolutely. Tell us what you're working on right now.
Mike Marshall: Like you mentioned, I've worked in jurisdictions in both Texas and California so I'm still working in a full-time capacity in a local planning and zoning department, but on the side I'm also working on some land development projects. Some multi-family project as well as a smaller residential subdivision, so kind of doing project management on that side. I'm kind of transitioning out of that, and as you mentioned kind of moving towards my own land investment company, but also at the same time what I do is I'll help out different investors, try to understand what they can do with their property. What can I do with this piece of land? As you mentioned, it's "What do I have to begin with?" And "what can I get?" And ultimately what do I need to do to be able to get that?
Jack Butala: That's really, really, really interesting, so I'm going to cut right to the chase. I'm going to probably ask what most of our members are thinking right now, "Well, hell I have 640 acres in Texas, what can I do with it? Can I subdivide it? Can I get it down to five acres?" So can you help with something like that?
Mike Marshall: Yeah, I do that kind of thing a lot. In general, the unfortunate answer is that it really depends. It depends on the jurisdiction you're in, it depends what their requirements are, and ultimately what the zoning is. So, if you're looking at zoning, you're looking at wanting to subdivide a property, you have to look at things like, "what's my minimum lot size requirement?" If it's a residentially-zoned property, which is I know what we tend to look at more often. What's the density requirement? How many units can I get on an acre of land? What are my requirements as far as roadway frontage? What about infrastructure? So it kind of goes on and on in terms of the development side of things, but just from a pure zoning perspective, it's going to be a situation of, what is it in terms of the number of units I can get on the property? That's going to be dependent on each jurisdiction. As you move out into more rural areas it's going to tend to be larger lot sizes of course, and lower density.
Jack Butala: So you know our whole group is ... We try to find rural, inexpensive property that's almost 90 percent of the tim...